This invention lies in the field of housing construction and preparation of lumber therefor. More particularly, it concerns the preparation of cylindrical logs of selected diameters and lengths, prepared so that they can be rapidly set up in the form of walls of a house or building.
In the days before the development of suitable saw mills for the preparation of board lumber for the construction of homes, logs were cut by hand to be more or less of a selected cylindrical size and were fitted together by means of saddle notches, etc. to provide an enclosure for the purpose of protection from the weather, etc.
The construction of a house in the form of a log cabin has notable advantages, particularly in the strength and rigidity of the structure and in the thermal insulation provided by the thick wood logs. However, because of the difficulty of providing truly cylindrical logs, properly fitted with tongues and grooves so as to seal against the weather, the construction of houses by the use of sawed lumber advanced while the construction of log cabins terminated.
However, there are certain advantages in the use of a log cabin for style and comfort, but also in the fact that in many wilderness areas where industry requires the attendance of a number of people, it is difficult to provide the kind of saw mill required to cut logs to the proper lumber size for conventional housing construction.
This invention describes a self-contained simple apparatus for efficiently handling logs of various diameters and lengths for the preparation of cylindrical logs modified with tongue and groove surfaces on top and bottom respectively, for the construction of homes or buildings. Such a self-contained apparatus is simpler and cheaper than the conventional type of saw mill and is therefore well adapted to be carried into wilderness areas for the construction of housing, particularly where there is plenty of timber of suitable size, etc.
In the prior art, logs have been prepared for the construction of log houses by the use of a more or less conventional lathe, in which the raw log was clamped between centers and rotated by the lathe head. Cutters were provided to travel along the lathe bed to cut the log down to a selected diameter. The logs were then moved to and put on a milling machine which was used to cut the flats on top and bottom and to provide the tongue and groove construction as desired. The logs were then moved to a third location to cut the saddle notches and to cut them to precise length, etc. All of this required separate handling and transport, was expensive and required considerable man power and machinery, and was therefore too expensive to be used commercially in competition with commercial housing construction.